Underneath the Fox's Fur
by Dysart
Summary: My take on some excerpts of Vulpes' life, beginning with his past before the Legion has taken him. Be warned: It won't be a smoothly ride.


Aaron had always been a silent child. He was obedient, respectful, he loved his mother, he cared for his two younger sisters and the three brothers.

He plowed the fields, went hunting with his father, cut meat, chopped wood, did _savages-things_.

He had inherited the slender build from his mother's side.

He was not as muscular and dark as his father, who had long black hair and thick, tanned arms. His mother was long-legged, thin, blue-eyed, pale.

Aaron was long-legged, thin but athletic, blue-eyed, pale, brown-haired.

Aaron was eight.

* * *

They came at first dawn.

They had only twenty men, but the fight was over before it had begun. The tribe was small, the men no fighters, but peasants and cattle drovers. They executed them all, and some of the resisting and elderly women, as well.

The blood dripping from the machetes glistened in the red rays of the morning sun, ornated the faces of the attackers and wetted the crimson cloth of their armors.

Aaron knelt in a row, next to his mother, next to his littler sister, among the other survivors. Women, young boys, young girls, no male older than ten, no female older than forty.

There had been blood, so much blood, congealing on the warm, brown earth, and screaming and terror, and then it had been all over in a rush of minutes, and now there was sobbing, and crying and shouting.

His sister Leah, one year younger than him, was smeared with the blood of their uncle, who had shared a tent with them and was slayed by a knife cutting his throat, and her silent tears mixed with the dried crimson on her cheeks.

Only two of the attackers had found their deaths by the scythes and pitchforks of the tribe's men. The others were now pillaging the tents and the corpses of fathers, grandmothers and uncles, searching for articles of value, were none would be found. The tribe had been poor, the only valuable things were the herd of ten brahmins and some bottles of pre-war-scotch in the tent of their now rotting archon.

Two of the Legionnaires were striding along the row of people. The leader of the pack and his executioner, it seemed to Aaron, who was watching them carefully and afraid.

His mother next to him, though, showed no signs of fear. She was a strong person or maybe she was just too proud to let anybody see how terrified she was in fact.

Her youngest son was laying dead in her arms. Aaron had seen his mother suffocating the crying infant with her bare hands while the attack had raged outside their tent. George had been his name and he had only lived until his sixth month.

„They won't let him live", she had whispered when she was aware of Aaron's pale blue eyes staring at her.

„I will not let him get eaten alive by their mongrels."

Aaron had only nodded, but her deed frightened him as much as her cold pragmatism. She was proud and hard as the stony ground under their knees and Aaron was sure that she would not outlive the day.

The two Legionnaires stopped at a young boy, two heads away from Aaron's sister.

„Too thin. He won't make the walk back", the leader said and the other man swung his machete, cutting deep in the thin neck of the boy, spilling hot red blood on the people next to him, filling the air with another outburst of crying, gargling and the stench of iron.

The men went further, inspecting Leah without saying a word, but stopped at Aaron for the second time.

„How old are you, boy?"

Aaron looked up warily, unsure whether the man would hit him, if he thought Aaron was too bold.

„Eight", he answered and his voice was just a rasping, like autumn-leaves rustling under the rough sole of leather-sandals.

„Pretty smallish for an eight-year old", said the man with the wet glistening machete over his shoulder. The blood on it had ran down the blade and was now soaking his gloves. Other than the leader, his face was wrapped in a black scarf, and the cloth above his mouth cushioned every word he spoke. „And scrawny."

The fear rose again in Aaron's chest and laid its claws made of ice around his tiny, fluttering heart. Too scrawny, too small, too wounded, too dumb meant a blade on his neck, his blood on the gown of his mother and sister, his soul evaporating like his blood in the summer heat. His palms were wet with sweat while the leader glanced over him a second and a third time.

„My lord, please, let me -" Aaron's mother's pleading was interrupted by a heavy blow with the butt of the machete on her brow. She cried out, one single time, and when she lifted her head again, her left eye was emblazoned with her own blood, dripping from her lashes.

„Do not raise your voice, when you're not spoken to, woman!"

She nodded, but whispered anyway. The executioner was about to hit her again, but the leader hold him back by laying his hand on the shoulder of the other man.

„Hit her again, if she speaks nonsense", he said and looked at the pale, young woman in front of him.

„Thank you, my lord, thank you", she spoke in a soft, obedient voice and bowed as much as it was possible for her. Blood trickled on the sand and Aaron felt like he had to vomit.

„He is my son, my lord, and he might not seem to be, but he is strong. Aaron is the only boy in the village, who can read and write. He can numerate and he is clever enough to learn your Latin."

During the following half an hour, they were scattering the blood of two other boys, one girl and another woman onto the dusty ground of Aaron's home. He had escaped the same fate because of his mother, but he did not know whether she had really done him a favor.

* * *

His mother did not outlive the day, like he had foresaw it on the morrow.

After they had been bound to each other in a long row, marching along the way the leader forced them to go, abandoning their homeland, their dead and their memories, and after they had been marching the whole day with just a brief break to fetch some water on a stream, the dim light of even fall made it dangerous to go any further in those mountainous parts of the country.

The Legionnaires made them set up camp on a grassy plateau and while he was counting the endless stars above his head, Aaron comforted his sister Leah and his younger brother Eric.

Some of the men forced the prettier women into small bushes or behind greater rocks and the leader took Aaron's mother with him. She followed without resisting and without giving her children a glance, and her son pressed his palms on the ears of his sister, so she would not hear the screams and the moans and the rustling of cloth.

Aaron's mother died without losing her pride, with a knife in her throat. She had hidden it in her leather-boots and aimed it at herself, while the Legionnaire was pulling her clothes down. She drowned in her own blood and left her children behind.

She was afraid, Aaron realized after the leader had cut off her head and threw it to her children's feet. She was too afraid to live just one moment further under the force of the Golden Bull, could not handle to kneel in the dust as a slave.

She was a coward, she was weak. Aaron was nothing like her.

But her dead and pale blue eyes, crusted with blood and on the morrow circled by flies, would never left his thoughts and his dreams and were following him every time his glance wandered onto a broken mirror, the glass of a window, or a still pool of water.

Aaron was eight and his innocence was gone.


End file.
